Data files (e.g., word processing documents, presentation documents, spreadsheet documents, pictures or other images, sound files, software applications, executable code, etc.) may be stored in persistent storage locations on storage devices in particular file formats. Accessing one of these data files typically includes retrieval of the entire data file from the persistent storage location.
When the data files are stored in the persistent storage location, the storage device may perform a number of pre-storage processes before writing the data files to the storage location. For example, the storage device may perform security checks on the data files, such as searching for viruses and/or corrupted files. The storage device also may perform property discovery on the data files. The aggregation of one or more of these pre-storage processes may be referred to as a save pipeline. Implementing the save pipeline may be relatively expensive in terms of time and/or resources.
Multiple users may wish to edit a document stored in persistent storage. For example, users may wish to collaboratively author the document. Such multi-user authoring may cause problems in scalability and/or performance. For example, storing changes from multiple users may require a potentially unbounded amount of computation by the save pipeline (e.g., the save pipeline may be implemented for each set of changes for each user). Such a drain on resources may cripple the storage device's ability to handle very frequent file update requests.